-Got my hair re-cut at this well recommended place at the galleria called "zarelli & company," by none other than the zarelli himself, jason. He was pretty workman-like. Listened to me, and gave me basically what I wanted. I say basically only because I wanted symmetry between both sides of my head, but because of the damage pam did from la pompenne, he could only do a good job on one side, while try to not make the bad side look worse...
...sigh.
So at least on one side of my head I have a Mandy Moore layered cut. On the other side, well, it's like some decided that I needed two layers of bangs starting at my part and going to the left, with the top layer being thicker, longer, and off center of the real layer of bangs. This means that where the layers fall on the right side of my head, I have just a chunk missing on the left side of my head from my bangs to my ear. Then some half hearted layers start after that.
Remember folks, I had hair, all one length, all the way down to my butt when this started, and only a light fringe of bangs. Now, well, let's say that I will be wearing barrettes for the frickin' conference that I wasted all this time trying to be pretty for.
-Then, there's the glasses.
As you probably know, my eyesight is a problem. I always will need glasses (cannot wear contacts, believe me) unless I get lasix (or my corneas blow and need to be replaced, which is a possibility). So, I need glasses. My old ones were not working well and looked dated.
So, I went to lenscrafters because I had a coupon and they would be done in an hour. Note, 1 hour. Let me stress how I do not have time to waste on this stuff. I just need an update to my perscription, pick out some frames, and bang, I'm done.
Long story short, I went back four times. Then I had to go see *another* doctor because the first one apparently is known to be careless about perscriptions (wtf?!). They never got it right. I had to return the lovely frameless glasses that I wanted to be able to wear in front of everyone in vegas, something chic, something attractive... because it took two weeks (actually just over a week, but now it is too late) to come in and were way off.
Does this mean I have to go back to my old glasses after taking two weeks to get used to the new ones? Well, I did get a spare pair of glasses with the new perscription as back up. They were forty dollars. Just clear lenses in some square sunglass frames. I ended up keeping them because I am desperate. I can't go back, the previous glasses gave me headaches on the best of days, nevermind having to overcome the conditioning of getting used to the new glasses.
So now my hair is worse than it was if I left it alone, and the glasses are not much better than my originals. I spent about two to three weeks dealing with these things for nothing. I should have focused on my work.
The moral of the story--- it's hopeless. Don't try. And certainly don't expect anything to happen in a timely manner, without grueling weeks even months of repeated attempts. There is a reason that almost forty years have gone by and no miracle of hip coolness has happened to my appearance. It's not rocket science, if I have tried again and again, and the best the stylists can say is "It would look nice in a bun," then maybe it would.
But, I haven't given up entirely. I will seriously consider lasix and I plan to get braces. So here's the score:
Hair-- 4.5 from the russian judge. definitely not what I had hoped. This will require a real, gifted professional (you know the one, they're retiring next month...). Until then...well at least I am not bald.
Glasses-- 5.5 from the russian. The french judge abstains due to fashion differences. $660+ later, and now it seems there is something mysterious and possibly serious wrong with my left eye. I will have to spend some (potentially extensive) time dealing with it. Lasix, at $2500 an eye might be an option--- only I do have to write a book soon (more on that in a moment) and can't afford to go blind and get used to it while working. Actually the glasses I have are smaller and square, so they are a little trendier. But they are obviously cheap, a little oversized (the only size they had...figures), and slightly crooked because my left eye is having problems that tilting seems to help). So I looked a little like a deranged naughty librarian with silly hair. Weee.
-Now about work.
I finished the chapter for that guy about vista's control panel. I am super glad he liked it, but it took a week longer than I expected. I am so thoroughly sick of Microsoft's crappy piece of monkey dung they call vista (I am afraid it makes ME look like OS X). I cannot believe they have so completely brainwashed themselves into thinking that the average joe is going to embrace this OS. I hear bells tolling.
Anyway, I had crashes, problems with screenshots, problems with video drivers, three different builds coming out in the time I was working on the chapter. Two physical machines had hardware issues, and I had two weird problems with screenshots in VMs (running VPC 2004sp1 with the beta2 additions). What was most frustrating were the undocumented changes that occurred between builds. I was trying to take screenshots that would match the book, which apparently was really going to be done with the last, best build they could get before production. Also, they wanted me to take screenshots in Aero Glass with transparency off. Uh, I am a server grrl, focused on business machines. I only have one computer out of ten that can run Aero Glass and I was beta testing Office 2007 on it.
Needless to say, in the end, in desperation, I wiped and installed Vista RC2 on that machine (with the screenshot software, which is another story), so I could get screenshots as close to the final book's screenshots as possible. And found that certain applets in control panel functioned *differently* in that last build than the did in the previous builds. Dammit. That meant that not only were my screenshots significantly different, but my *text* was different (and now incorrect). So, due to having to have aero glass running as the theme, and the fact that several significant applets were significantly different, I had to retake *every single* screenshot-- *and* rewrite content to match the new changes.
Okay, so I finished that, right on the toes of the next thing that I had to do under a tight deadline-- Technical Review of the third module of MOC for the indians.
Bottom line on them--- they kept changing the schedule, making it impossible for me to do my other jobs and still work for them. In addition, they changed the VMs and didn't clearly give me an activation key. Also, I got the module a little late because I was finishing the control panel chapter, so I was blindsided by the fact that I was supposed to be doing six hours of review on one 50page (apx) document which turned into (and I am not making this up) *five* different documents of varying lengths written (very, very redundantly) about the same topic, approximately.
It was too much. I asked to be taken off the project. The PM complied. But during the conference call, in order to see what went wrong and how to fix it, the PM's buddy (who I *still* don't know what his real involvement was) actually said, "Don't take this the wrong way, but what made you feel you were qualified to do this job if it takes you so long to do...?"
Ha, how about, if I were not qualified for the job, I would not have *found any* errors. I would have thought is was all fine and therefore would not have taken so long trying to fix and double check the supposed SME's (subject matter expert) work. If I were not *better* than the SME on staff, then we would not have been having that conversation. *That's* what makes me think I am qualified, jack@ss.--- of course I didn't say that. The SME's friend was another person on the call, and the SME had just been in a bad car accident, so I didn't think it was prudent to bring up. Instead, I said that I was naturally cautious about criticizing another expert's work without double checking and making absolutely sure that I was correct. That I was honestly giving that SME the benefit of the doubt befitting someone of their rank.
LOL. Yay me! I am free of the indians. Oh, and here is what I learned--- That the indians *are not* the bad guys. Oh, okay, I was poorly managed by them. They still have not paid me the last 200$ they owe me and fully expect them not to. The management lied to me, tried to make me do extra work, and lied about scheduling. But, they are only a smalll percentage of the people on the project-- those whacky managers. The real people, the writers, experts, designers, and such-- they are real people, trying to do a good job in absolutely no time. MS is insane, demanding fundamental design changes on the fly, in production, from people who don't speak our language that well, that are 9.5 hours ahead of us, who are being paid peanuts, worked extremely long hours, and probably (because they are being managed by the same people I was--God help them) not clearly told what they are supposed to do in time to *do* it.
Those people were good people who bent over backwards to accomodate me. When I asked for the lab virtual machines that go with the courseware, they complied, they went *way* out of their way to painstakingly upload 22 GBs of data to an FTP server for me to use.-- AND here is the point I wasn't aware of until the exit interview-- despite the *express* instructions from MS *not* to do so (gee, I wonder who did that?
So who is at fault here? Why is the courseware so bad, so slipshod, so rushed, so faulty contentwise? Why are the reviewers not communicated with properly, given adequate time to their jobs, adequate tools, and given conflicting instructions concerning their responsibilities?
It's not because of the indians. It is not because they don't care. It is *because* of Microsoft. Or at least one significant person, the key person in each review interaction with the indians. He explicitly wants to undermine anything the reviewers do. Insisting on short turnover times, insisting on *no* access to the virtual machines the entire courserware is *based* on. He doesn't want the reviewers to really *review* and edit the courseware. He just wants them to quickly read over it. Not check the accuracy of the labs, practices, or demos. Not to double check or challenge the errors found-- just "flag" them to be fixed later (which, if anyone has ever taken an MOC class, knows they aren't). I guess if we really find errors, it would put a crimp in the schedule because now they have to deal with them. Oh, the horror.
He, and therefore MS, is the root cause of the lack of quality in the process of technical review of the microsoft official courseware. The indians simply want to do the job. They know that if it is bad, they either have to do it over, or they won't get paid (okay, maybe they are hoping that it's not that bad...). They want it right as quickly and easily as possible. They don't want the hassle. It is MS that doesn't want the job to be done right. I don't know exactly why-- but now you know.
In all of this, I was supposed to be working on my presentations for the conference in Las Vegas *NEXT WEEK.* Hello, yes, that soon. I have the leg work done for my preconference session. I need to finish building (oh the long, painstaking process) the labs for deployment.
Then, and this is how behind I am, I need to build the labs for the network access protection session, and resurrect and run through the labs for my network access quarantine control session. Yes those sessions are only an hour or so long, but to demo any of it, I have to build all of it, regardless of length. ( I am writing this while I am backing up my external drive to free up space so I can *defrag* the drive. Yes, it is so full I can't defrag it, and I still have to build about eight to nine VMs in there) Later this week (on Wednesday) I need to drive out to Zelie to present my sessions to some really great, patient people so I can see how they go (gahd, those people are great. Really, I need to put them in the acknowledgements of my life somewhere...).
And here's something funny- my slides need to be done and turned in (in the correct format) tomorrow. That's it or game over (it's written into the contract). (I am now defragging the drive--- it should take an estimated three hours...sigh)
When I get back from the conference (assuming I survive it), I have to start on the book. That's right (for those of you who have heard this story), I signed the scary contract that might be a mistake to write an 800 page book about Windows Sharepoint Services 3.0 (the thing I taught at TechEd and tech reviewed a course on). The schedule is impossibly tight and I may well be getting set up to fail. But I can't know until I try, right?
That means, as soon as I get back I need to get my life in order; deal with my eyes, start on the process of getting braces, get the d@rned ducts cleaned (yes, we put thick filters over all of the duct vents in the house in order to turn on the heat-- we both were sick for a few days after, but at least we are not freezing), deal with the car (OMG the car-- the GM who was supposed to fix my brakes in August was *fired* and now they are not returning my calls), and more, then get started on the book. I have a week to straighten out my life, then back to work.
That means that I have very, very little time to rest, if you call catching up on all that life stuff resting. I have five days for the first section- the introduction- and that's solid (no give backs, no lifelines). I will be writing five pages a day for the next six months. That's it. No break unless it's a conference (which the editor encourages, maybe it increases sales).
Wish me luck.
So now you are caught up.
Oh, except for my heelys. I bought heely shoes so I could skate around the conference instead of walk. It would be great, fast, no impact, and fun. Okay, so I might look silly, until someone realizes how convenient it is. I really, really wish I had that for TechEd last June. I would have been *so* much less tired.
But this is the problem. You have to learn them. Like riding a bike, but more like skiing, it takes some skills (some non-instinctive skills) and muscles to heely. So it takes practice. I have had none. Zip. Zilch. So, I have heelys and no time to learn them. This means that I probably cannot use them for las vegas. Maybe in April at the networkworld gig...
And *now* you are caught up.
I guess I'll go do laundry while I defrag.
It's going to be a long, long night.
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